Observations on the River Wye, and Several Parts of South Wales, &c. Relative Chiefly to Picturesque Beauty; Made In the Summer of the Year 1770

London: R. Blamire, 1792. Hardcover. Very good. Third edition. 8vo, pp ix, 152, with 17 acquatint plates, bound in three-quarter leather and marbled boards. Some rubbing and scuffing to leather, two plates trimmed very close to fore edge margin, binding sound, text clean. Conetmporary ownership signature (dated 1794) on title page. Gilpin, an educator and writer on art, "travelled widely in Britain, with his notebook and sketching materials, in order to identify locations which offered that particular kind of beauty in landscape 'which is agreeable in a picture'. Picturesque tourism constituted 'a new object of pursuit', as he wrote in the first of these books, Observations on the River Wye (1782): the practice recommended was 'that of not merely describing; but of adapting the description of natural scenery to the principles of artificial landscape'. Further picturesque books, with aquatint reproductions of Gilpin's pen-and-wash drawings, included Observations on Cumberland and Westmorland (1786), the Scottish highlands (1789), south-west England and the Isle of Wight (1798), and the eastern counties of England and north Wales (1809)" (ODNB).